The Biggest Ranches
From the fabled King to the formidable 06, the twenty most storied spreads in Texas.
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SINCE O. W. KILLAM GREW UP ON A FARM IN MISSOURI, you’d think it was his love of ranching that led him to buy the 10,000-acre Villegas Ranch in Webb County in 1927. In fact, the lawyer and onetime Oklahoma state senator was interested in finding oil. Six years earlier, he had drilled his first well on some leased property in Webb County—also the first commercial oil well south of San Antonio—and out gushed the black gold that became the foundation of his family’s fortune.
In the years since, the Killams have acquired two more ranches with oil and gas reserves, the 95,000-acre Ortiz and the 102,000-acre Duval County (27,000 acres were recently partitioned to a branch of the family and are run as a separate ranch). And they’ve consistently invested some of the money made from oil in their cattle operations. Today the ranches are owned by O. W. Killam’s grandchildren, who run them much the way he did.
McCoy Ranches
LOCATION Jeff Davis, Pecos, and Reeves counties
ACRES 170,000
PRIMARY USE cow-calf
FOUNDED 1988
WHILE MANY OF ITS COUNTERPARTS ON BIG RANCHES use helicopters to round up cattle, the McCoy family employs a team of cowboys who live in camps on its land. It’s a practice rooted more in necessity than nostalgia: The ranches are hilly and mountainous, situated as they are in the Trans-Pecos outback, which can make it trickier and more expensive to veer from tradition. “The way we do it just works a heck of a lot better for us,” says 75-year-old Emmett McCoy, who owns the ranch with his wife, Miriam, and four family members.
The former roofer, who grew up in Houston and Galveston, didn’t start his large-scale ranching operation until the late eighties. In 1988, using profits from McCoy Corporation, a building-supplies company he founded after World War II and ran until he retired last year, McCoy bought the 22,000-acre Seven Springs Ranch about 165 miles north of Big Bend National Park. In the years since, the family has acquired nearly 150,000 more acres, including the historic Rockpile Ranch, which was once owned by the Reynolds family, and the U Ranch, which was previously part of the King Ranch.
Pitchfork Ranch
LOCATION Dickens and King counties
ACRES 170,000
PRIMARY USE cattle, quarter horses, farming
FOUNDED 1883
AS TEENAGERS IN POST—CIVIL WAR MISSISSIPPI, friends and distant cousins Eugene F. Williams and D. B. Gardner left their families’ plantations in search of more interesting and lucrative opportunities. Williams ended up in St. Louis, where he joined the Brown Shoe Company, eventually becoming a partner. Gardner headed to Texas, where he worked on ranches—first as a cowboy, then as a foreman—and finally saved enough to buy part of a modest ranch of his own. In 1881 Gardner heard that the Pitchfork brand was for sale for $50,000 and got another man, Col. J. S. Godwin, to invest. The next year, Williams arrived and bought Godwin’s share; together, he and Gardner founded the Pitchfork Ranch near Guthrie.
Though cattle has always been the ranch’s main source of revenue, the Pitchfork is known for its horses—though not the kind originally envisioned. Its first quality horses were Thoroughbreds brought to the ranch by Williams’ polo-playing children. But Thoroughbreds didn’t suit the cowboys’ needs, and in 1940 the Pitchfork switched to quarter horses, producing some of the finest in the country.
Today the ’Forks (as it is called) is owned by Williams’ descendants.
Yturria Family Ranches
LOCATION Cameron County
ACRES 165,000
PRIMARY USE cattle, oil and gas, wild game hunting, birding
FOUNDED 1860
ALL SOUTH TEXAS RANCHES HAVE STRONG MEXICAN INFLUENCES, but the Yturria ranches are unique: Of all the founders of large Texas ranches in the nineteenth century, Francisco Yturria was the only one of Mexican ancestry. Born in Matamoros in 1830, he came to the United States as an eighteen-year-old apprentice to his father’s friend Charles Stillman, the premier merchant in the Rio Grande Valley. Yturria started his own mercantile business just two years later and soon founded the first bank in South Texas. The bulk of his fortune was earned later, however, when he went into business with Stillman and Richard King, the founder of the King Ranch, during the Civil War.
Although Yturria founded his ranch in 1860, he rarely visited it until 1906, when he and King and other investors founded the area’s first railroad. When he died in 1912, he passed it on to his adopted children, who split it in half. Today more than thirty of Yturria’s descendants own different portions of the ranch.
Bass Family Ranches
LOCATION Aransas, Atascosa, Brooks, Hidalgo, Johnson, Kenedy, Kleberg, Parker, Red River, and Tarrant counties
ACRES 150,000 (est.)
PRIMARY USE cattle
FOUNDED N/A
HUNTING DOWN INFORMATION ABOUT THE TEXAS RANCH HOLDINGS of the notoriously tight-lipped Bass family is nothing less than serious sport. The Basses, like the Easts, refuse to discuss the subject publicly, and neither the family nor its employees will confirm acreage, location, or any other details. Not that you can’t find out a few things by digging: According to our sources, the Basses have three well-known Texas ranches. Lee Bass owns the El Coyote, which is south of Falfurrias, while Ed owns the Winscott southwest of Fort Worth. And the Bass family owns the San Jose Cattle Company on the Gulf Coast, along with thousands of additional acres scattered across Texas. Of these, the Winscott is the most historic, since it was founded in the late 1800’s by Winfield Scott, one of Fort Worth’s first millionaires. And the San Jose ranch is the most unusual. It’s situated on San Jose Island, 34,000 acres the Basses own north of South Padre; so cattle must either swim or be transported by barge to and from the mainland. (The private island has a requisite airstrip, although it’s usually used for people, not animals.)
Scharbauer Ranches
LOCATION Martin, Midland, Moore, and Oldham counties
ACRES 150,000
PRIMARY USE cow-calf, quarter horses
FOUNDED 1887
UNLIKE OTHER EASTERNERS WHO WENT WEST IN THE LATE 1800’s intending to get into the cattle business, John Scharbauer (pronounced “Scar-ber”) actually had some ranching experience. The son of German immigrants, he had been working on his father-in-law’s farm near Schenectady, New York, for several years when he lit out for Texas.
Arriving by railroad in Fort Worth in 1883, Scharbauer teamed up with another fellow and bought a few acres and a herd of sheep. Four years later, he moved to Midland, switched to cattle, and founded the family ranch. That same year, he was joined in the business by his nephew Clarence, who inherited the business when he died (he had no sons). Over the years, Clarence added more acres and entered into a long-term leasing agreement with the University of Texas, which counts the Scharbauers among its oldest lessors. When he died, Clarence left the property to his son, Clarence Junior, who acquired even more acres, including some from the Matador Land and Cattle Company (see “Shrinking Giant,” page 128). Clarence Junior and his children continue to own and operate the ranch today.
06 Ranch
LOCATION Brewster and Jeff Davis counties
ACRES 130,000
PRIMARY USE cow-calf
FOUNDED 1912
IF YOU THRIVE ON EWING-STYLE DRAMA, YOU won’t much like the 06. “We’re very lucky that we all get along—at least so far,” says Ann Lacy Brown. “Of course, now that I’ve said that…well, I’m not a fool to say it’s forever.”
It may well be. The 06 was founded by Herbert Kokernot, Sr., after he bought land from the Pruitt family in 1912. (He actually inherited the 06 brand from his grandfather David Lee Kokernot, who made his fortune in the mercantile business and in ranching after serving as a scout for Sam Houston during the Battle of San Jacinto.) Eighty-six years later, the ranch is still in the family’s hands—it is co-owned by Ann, her brother, Chris, her sisters, Elizabeth and Golda, and their mother, Mary Ann Kokernot Lacy—and by all accounts, everyone gets along professionally and socially. Chris manages the ranch for his mother and sisters, who seem to be pleased with the job he’s doing—which is not common in these situations.
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